ASK STATMAN
The football may have stopped for the summer but the stats continue. Club statistician Paul Dutton conducts another surgery for sent-in number-based questions.
I'm going to start with what I thought was a fascinating enquiry from Roger regarding a Chelsea legend who celebrated his 85th birthday on the pitch at Stamford Bridge towards the end of last season.
Roger has been puzzled for over 50 years that the total number of goals Roy scored for Chelsea during his career is always reported as 150, a figure that makes him the joint third highest scorer in the club's history.
Yet Roger is aware of what appears to be a missing goal, if you add up what was recorded at the time. Then Roy's season totals combined reach 151.
Roger wonders if the discrepancy might come from a Charity Shield goal Roy scored not counting towards the total but notes that a goal by Frank Blunstone scored in the same game does not go missing from the records in the same way.
I am pleased to tell Roger I have managed to get to the bottom of this one with a big helping hand from another Chelsea statistician, Derek Webster, who was able to supply original match reports. These narrow it down to a game on November 6 1948 against Huddersfield away which Chelsea won 4-3.
Roy was credited with two goals that day and all the rest of that season in the Chelsea match programmes he was credited with both goals.
Yet in the first programme of 1949/50, it had him down as scoring one goal only with a Bill Whitaker own-goal appearing. There were in fact three or four goals that had credits changed similarly over that summer.
I've also spoken to Albert Sewell, the programme editor back then, who doesn't recall this one particular change but says there were changes made in this way. Albert is also sure his later book, Chelsea Champions, published in 1955 with all the seasons listed is accurate and that has only one Bentley goal from the game.
So although we remain unclear of the exact mechanism, it appears whatever was the 1940s equivalent of today's dubious goals committee reviewed each season in the summer and credits were altered according.
Therefore, when the corrected numbers are all added up, 150 is the final figure reached.
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A second Roy Bentley question came in from regular correspondent Bill Torode who wants to know who took over as captain when our first championship-winning skipper moved on to Fulham.
Roy's last full season was 1955/56 and he started the first eight games of next season before transferring but by then wasn't captain. Stan Wicks was captain for the first two games that season but was then replaced by Ken Armstrong.
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Next I'll return to the subject of great comebacks, raised in the previous Ask Statman when we recalled Peter Houseman saving a cup tie at Burnley and then a famous Clive Walker-inspired home win over Bolton when we came back from 3-0 down to triumph 4-3.
That led to both Raj Mathur who now lives in Florida and Steve Gallagher writing in to point out a similar feat against Blackpool and asking for more details.
Raj was at the game while Steve can remember a Grandstand presenter on the TV becoming a little overheated as we staged our recovery - and they are correct, there is a spooky similarity between the games.
The match was at Blackpool on 24 October 1970 and Les Shannon, the home team's manager, was sacked two days after the defeat.
Chelsea were sixth in the top flight at the time, Blackpool were 21st and a 19-year-old John Phillips made his debut for us, Peter Bonetti having suffered a hamstring injury.
Jimmy Armfield, known to younger football followers these days as a radio summariser, was captain of Blackpool aged 35.
The seaside club were 3-0 up by half time, as Bolton had been in 1978 with goals by Fred Pickering and Alan Suddick. Then with 20 minutes left, Charlie Cooke came on for Tommy Baldwin and there was much reshuffling including David Webb moving up front. Keith Weller, then Webb, then Weller again brought Chelsea level.
In the last minute, Dave Hatton put Weller's cross into his own net for the winner. Remember that Walker was a sub with 20 minutes to go against Bolton eight years later and the winner then was a Sam Allardyce own-goal in the last minute. You can spot the uncanny resemblance.
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Those might have been late winners for Chelsea but Chris Mumford wants to know about the latest winner of them all.
He recalls a game in the 1970s when Chelsea played Stoke City when he was just a few years old and was sitting in the old West Stand with his father.
The game ended 3-3 with Ian Hutchinson scoring so late on that he remembers Stoke literally taking the kick off and the whistle blowing, with the match announcer stating that the goal had been scored five seconds before the ref had been due to blow.
Sadly I can't confirm, as Chris had hoped, that this was Chelsea's latest ever winner, as the lack of records on this subject down the years make it impossible to measure. Goal minutes weren't recorded for many years so you would need to find match reports of every game back to 1905 and rely on the reporter stating exactly when a late goal went in.
However I can give more info on that Stoke match.
It was our fourth meeting with the Potters in 18 days, three of the games in the League Cup. This was a league match and they scored through Jimmy Greenhoff, Mickey Droy equalised, Sean Haslegrave made it 2-1 and Chris Garland 2-2. Then Jimmy Robertson put Stoke back ahead with three minutes to go.
With the last header, Hutchinson tied it up when Palmer, their goalkeeper, fumbled Ian Britton's shot.
While on the subject of old matches versus Stoke, Ian Neill of Swansea has one of our regular first game enquires. He was around 10 years and enjoyed a big Chelsea win.
From other details Ian emailed in, the only possible match for his first is one on 17 October 1964 - a 4-0 win when the scorers were George Graham with two, Bobby Tambling and Bert Murray.
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Another first game email has thrown up a little story.
Dharm claims to have been driven to near distraction attempting to trace his 'debut' versus Wolves at home in the early 70s. He knows it was a midweek match, again the old West Stand was his location - the benches to be precise.
The only midweek match against Wolves between our 1970 FA Cup and relegation in 1975 was on Tuesday March 6 1973. Wolves were ninth in the table, Chelsea were 11th.
The goals came in the second half to make it a 2-0 win for Wolves with Dharm correct in remembering the names of the scorers - Derek Dougan and Dave Richards.
The Chelsea team was: Phillips, Locke, Harris, Hollins, Hinton, Kember, Garland, Hudson, Osgood, Garner, Britton.
The additional small tale is that it was the lowest crowd of season at that point, 18,800, with a major contributing factor to that attendance being that the District Line on the Underground had suffered a major derailment, stopping all trains between Earl's Court and East Putney.
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Time to bring matters a little more up to date and a question sent in by Terry Lynch from Ireland who, clearly with those dramatic matches back in April when we beat Bolton 4-3 and drew 4-4 with Liverpool, wants to know the time before when the team conceded at least seven goals in successive home games.
For that we have to go back to the time when Bobby Campbell was manager, certainly more recent that I first imagined, and old Division One games against Wimbledon and Liverpool.
We had been promoted the previous season and started well, even going top of the league in early November when Steve Clarke scored the only goal at Everton. But on December 2 1989, Wimbledon won 5-2 at the Bridge with Dave Beasant in the Chelsea goal failing to acquitting himself well against his former club. Then Liverpool won by the exact same scoreline two weeks later.
The high-sscoring home games didn't end their either. We beat West Ham 4-3 in a Full Members' Cup tie in the next home game and then lost 0-3 to Aston Villa at home on New Year's Day.
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I'll deal with some quick ones now. Stephen Fowler asks how many games our longest unbeaten home run in Europe amounts to. The answer is 33, which was the first run we ever had, stretching from a game against Frem of Denmark in the 1958/59 season until we lost to Lazio in the second group stage of our first Champions League campaign in 1999/00. The current unbeaten run is 18.
Mark from Virginia in the USA wants a breakdown of Didier Drogba's record against Liverpool which after this season's Champions League success stands at 22 games played, nine goals, nine wins, seven draws and six defeats for Chelsea and Marseille.
Neil Pepin asks for the highest attendance at Stamford Bridge in the famous season of 1969/70 during which he went to all the games as a child and recalls a very high figure for the home game against Manchester United. At 61,479, that was the top crowd figure. The average that season was over 40,000.
It has come to the attention of Dave Larmour in Canada that a neighbour of his once played for Chelsea. He guesses the neighbour is in his late 30s or 40 and his name is Richard Howard.
I have to inform Dave that we haven't had a Richard Howard on our books as a professional. The closest to that name would be Terry Howard who is 43 at the moment and played six games in 1985 and 86.
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Finally this time and with Chelsea next in action on a pre-season tour of the United States, I'll end with a question from Jibu who wants numbers regarding attendance during pre-season tours in the past?
The breakdown of the four American tours so far is:
2004
Playing Celtic in Seattle - 30,504.
Roma in Pittsburgh- 25,317
Milan in Philadelphia - 39,123
2005
Milan in Foxborough - 26,208.
DC United in Washington - 31,473
Milan in New Jersey - 35,444
2006
MLS All Stars in Chicago - 21,210
2007
Club América in Stanford - 47,329
Suwon Bluewings in Los Angeles - 15,349
LA Galaxy in Los Angeles - 27,000.
And there I'll have to end if but with plenty of questions awaiting an answer, Ask Statman will be back soon. Please email statman@chelseafc.com with any queries, corrections or comments.
